Saw this movie at Sathyam Cinemas' Six Degrees theatre on Saturday the 28th of February 2009. Spoiler Alert: I will be disclosing the villain at the end of this review.
The movie begins with Inspector Clousseau (Steve Martin) being called upon to head a Dream Team of international expert detectives to catch the "Tornado", a thief who has been knocking off major artifacts across museums of the World. The Tornado also manages to steal the ring worn by the Pope even as this Dream Team is in Rome trying to solve the case. At one stage, the members of the dream team are embarrassed beyond tolerable levels and move Clousseau out of the team. How Clousseau solves the case in his own unique and as his loyal assistant Ponton (role reprised by Jean Reno) calls it "unorthodox" ways, even after he is removed from the team, forms the rest of the plot.
The cast is an ensemble one with the surprise packages being Andy Garcia, John Cleese and Alfred Molina. For the non-movie buffs these guys have appeared in many movies and their famous/popular ones are the Casino Owner in Ocean's 11, Q in Pierce Brosnan's James Bond movies and the villainous professor in Spiderman-2. Respectively of course.
And the main reason why I went to this movie instead of waiting for its TV premiere was to see Aichu. A lot has been written about her role in this movie and believe you me, she doesn't have a bit part. I mean, her role is as big or small as that of any of the other bigwigs I mentioned in the previous paragraph. She doesnt appear as a glam doll and I will also be the first one to admit that she doesn't look that great in this movie.
Anyways, coming back to the movie, it is an out and out comedy belonging to the slapstick genre. There are quite a lot of brilliant scenes featuring Steve Martin and to me what stood out the most was the scene where he is investigating the missing ring from the pope. I haven't rolled around in my seat in laughter as much as I did for this scene. Even the first interaction between Steve Martin and Alfred Molina where each one tries to show-off his detective skills is fantastic. And the way he inadvertently sets fire to the same restaurant twice is also great. Special mention must also be mentioned about Lily Tomlin who as Mrs. Berenger tries to teach etiquette to Inspector Clousseau.
But the second half of the movie does drag around a little and especially towards the closing stages, it gets quite predictable. And here comes the spoiler alert: Sonia (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) is the real villain (and is also not the Tornado).
All in all it is a good entertaining movie with quite a lot of laughs and gags thrown in. You will surely not regret the money you spend for the ticket, though the same cant be said about the money you spend on the snacks.
1 comment:
If you had known Ais was villain(i) , I bet you would not have watched/atleast would have cursed the movie/director.
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